Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Of course, YouTube room, podcast room, and on the upper floor, the offices.

There's an adjacent building to Dr. Other than the video and media. But the other uses are already permitted in that class that he mentioned. So really just the media and video is what you're talking about.

Here's a bit more information for you commissioners. The requested amendment will be to permit video and other media productions to the table of uses for the downtown commercial district. Here is a map of the downtown commercial district. We only have one in the city. And a few points to consider, I have event space definition, video and other media productions definition, and a chart that shows the other zoning districts that allow video and other media productions, which is the LMWM amusement and entertainment districts. Any questions?

Questions for staff? Any other questions for the applicant? Okay. We'll see you in two weeks. Moving on to TET 2608 Ocean Boulevard.

The drinking overlay. Yes, this is our request by the City of Murr Beach to enact an overlay zone limiting land use of nightclubs, bars, and other drinking places. will allow existing drinking places properly licensed as of May 12, 2026 to continue as a non-conforming use and to direct Planning Commission to review zoning amendments, hold public hearings, and make recommendations. So, I'm not sure if you all watched City Council on Tuesday. City Council voted a pending ordinance doctrine and requested that Planning Commission review everything to do with drinking in the Ocean Boulevard downtown area and to form recommendations to City Council in the form of So under the pending ordinance doctrine, City Council stated the zoning map and text of the City of Myrtle Beach zoning code are to be amended as indicated by the following billings. that these things will be changing. It is what is in the purview of this board and the best interest of the city of Myrtle Beach that these are the things that are looked at. So first, occupancy restrictions, bars, lounges, pubs, taverns, nightclubs, and other drinking places as defined in section 203 of the zoning code. And buildings that have but or are adjacent to Ocean Boulevard shall be limited to an occupancy of 150 persons or less. The overlay zone boundaries, such overlay shall apply to properties there or but or are adjacent to Ocean Boulevard between Grand Dunes Boulevard and the point where Ocean Boulevard and Kings Highway intersect. The restriction of land use in the overlay zone so as to prohibit the land use as bars, lounges, pubs, taverns, nightclubs, and other drinking places as defined in section 203 of the zoning code where occupancy exceeds 150 persons. drinking places in the overlay zone that are legally in existence and possess valid licenses as of May 12, 2026 may continue to operate as non-conforming uses. So those are the four items that City Council invoked the pending ordinance doctrine on. Council's directive to Planning Commission was to review and text change recommendations to City Council regarding the overlay zone, including its boundaries, restrictions, and any other conditions to be imposed on drinking places therein, such as geographic restrictions so as to avoid oversaturation of said uses, security within the structure and on the premise, occupancy limitations, minimum and maximum square footage, exterior lighting and signage, adequate on-site parking related to occupancy or square footage, appropriate operational hours, structural code compliance, landscaping buffers, exterior noise buffers, and interior noise suppression. I just want to be clear on this one. It seems like a lot. It seems kind of like a checklist. This is not a task. I would argue that this is a responsibility for this board. This is what a planning commission does. They look at the best interests of our community and tries to formulate a policy or an ordinance response to that to get us to the best direction that we can go moving forward. In front of you on the table, I provided three different resources for you all to review after this meeting. It is the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, and then also the state of Rhode Island, general laws and titles. These are three different areas that have somewhat similar requirements, restrictions, or conditions that the planning commission has to look at. I wanted to get this kind of as a jump off point for the board to kind of review all conditions or restrictions that you all feel are necessary to put off. There's a distinction between a restaurant and a drinking place. So a drinking place is somewhere in the 60% or greater of the revenue comes from the sale of alcohol. So restaurants, there's cases where restaurants have to pull two separate licenses. You have one for the food, which also comprises your beer and wine sales, and then you have a separate license for just liquor sales. And to my understanding, a true drinking place is one where the liquor exceeds in the 60% of the revenue of that business.

What about like in a resort where you've got a bar area and you also have an outdoor bar area around the pool or whatever?

I think that, yeah, and Charlie, feel free to jump in on this one. I think that is more considered an accessory use to the primary use, which is a transient accommodation.

And it's typically tied to the restaurant and the hotel too, I think.

Yes. And simply wise, I have concern with zip. that you're charged with also on this. It may be better placed in the fire code or the building code, other than .

Particularly if you're talking about like insulation requirements and certain physical aspects.

You can have a space and you're required to build XYZ and have 15 toilets, but you can only have 150 people in there. But you still got to build it for the . Right. And that's where, is it really a zoning order that should run that number, or is it better suited in the building or fire code?

There's probably a little bit of both that would seem like . parking in square footage apartments like these.

That would fall kind of into my world, but yes, as far as capacity, you're looking at a different setting.

But if, I mean, the capacity for this room is 71. Yes. And we've got 150 on here, so it's not a big space, I mean. I have to ask, what do we have down there that's an example of 150?

That is a pretty small space. What's that? I said that is a pretty small space. First question is just to make sure where the old pavilion's at, when they have events there, like vendors and then you have like a country music fest, it's not really applicable to those type of events because they're saying alcohol is like an accessory use rather than a primary use.

Well in this case most of those would be pulled under a special events permit, so it's more of a temporary thing in nature rather than a sacred business like

Because, you know, that's planned out for that amount of crowd.

So it's adaptive. I figured that out. The second one is, anywhere in y'all zoning where you like, have y'all been talking about this specific type of situation? independent of what you'll...

This was independent of the zoning rewrite. Okay, so it's fresh and new to y'all. Well, and to Charlie's point, this one kind of skirts a couple different lines, so it wasn't one that was really on our radar for zoning rewrite because so much of this is comprised of the building code and the fire code. There's limited pieces of this that are definitely zoning, but that's where it's... And I just want to go back to the 150 number for y'all. If you look at the Philadelphia one, this one, they have a restriction. Their numbers fit. to pull something called a special assembly occupancy license. And then they condition that license with a bunch of different things. And if you, as the business owner, are in violation of any of those conditions, the city of Philadelphia can then revoke your special assembly license. So that's a way that they have kind of crafted to say, or signage and then if you as the business owner violation of any of these conditions on that license we can revoke that and put you back under that 50 person cap at that point so that is one potential option for the board to weigh i would say that out of all the research i've done philadelphia's kind of the most creative solution that i've seen so i would just ask you to please read into that one specifically um cameron i believe it at one point some of the arts and innovation district uh

zoning was changed to lessen some of the impact of bars and nightclubs? Correct.

We had a board for a while.

And then actually ordinances were put in place to address it? It was similar to kind of this one. That's what I was thinking. Maybe it would be worthwhile to look at the ordinances that were implemented in connection with that. Sure.

How does this affect the hotels that have bars specifically? You know, they sort of bar food, but the liquor sales are probably 60% greater than the opposite.

Well, I think, again, back to it, those bars are generally an accessory to the hotel. What we're looking at here is more just a straight shot. Like, this is a bar. This is what we do. 60% of our sales just come from this. When you're talking a hotel, more than 60% of your sales are going to come from the transient accommodations of that facility.

So there's some more nightclubs, cabarets, those kinds of things. Right. What about nightclub and hotel?

Accessory use. What's your primary use?

Accessory use.

Came out on the Philadelphia one. The Spanish Galleon. It has part of the halls. Like if you were to host a wedding, typically, like you pay for the wedding, it's like per head count of liquors included into that. How do they come up with a 60% number?

That one just, I don't exist in their code too often in Philadelphia. I thought this was a good jumping off, but I don't have a good answer for that one, so that's something I can look into.

Well, Brown's family has to pay it all anyways. Is that how it works?

Any other questions from commissioners?

I will be sending an email out to you all with the charge from City Council here on all the things that they've requested us for Planning Commission to look at in terms of crafting an ordinance for this. I just don't want to leave any stone unturned with what is in the best interest of this community. So, and then I don't think there is, again, When you invoke the pending ordinance doctrine, you put the things that you were seeking to have done, but that they're not sacred cows at this point. So if the board comes back and says, we actually don't think the cap is 150, we think it's 250, that is a recommendation that y'all can make to city council. If the board comes back and says, hey, They were looking at Ocean Boulevard and they actually think that whatever we come up with should apply to the entire city. That is applicable too. So really this is kind of an open window at this point for us to go at this task or challenge in front of us and really carry it.

Or if you don't even think it belongs in the zoning code. Yeah.

It would be interesting to know what's currently in place now. How many bars are suited for this many people because I have no idea.

I'm thinking like rip ties and those places. They're in that area where parking is not required, are they not? So they have no parking requirements currently?

Not yet.

That might ought to be looked at too. If we had a bunch of public parking garages down there, maybe it's not so important, but now that we don't. You know, normally those places would have to have extensive parking. Sure.

Do you want people parking, driving, or drinking, Todd? Well, I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, that could be a problem. But I'm just saying, I mean, it's not all the time.

Did I read it wrong or did it sound like a name? other than when we get to the point of a public hearing, are we going to try to get any information from the public about the public hearing?

Generally, we try to get as much feedback as we can through the public input process. This has hit rather quickly, so to put something together would be rather rapid. So we can try to get out there and see what we have for available resources to us. But I think the standard public input process would be adequate to get feedback from us.

But it also says that we can reschedule or continue at the discretion. So if we need to push it back.

I was going to say that this seems like a big deal. something that might take some time to work through and make sure we stamp this down. So when the public hearing, we call for the public hearing whenever we feel ready. Yeah.

That would be my recommendation. You have six months on the pending ordinance doctrine before you have to have something on the books or the public or the pending ordinance doctrine falls away. So there is time to get this done. So I think at this point it would just be adequately noticing a public hearing and moving forward with that as we typically do with text amendments. you invoke pending ordinance doctrine. It's essentially stating, we anticipate legislation coming in stopping this thing. So starting today, you can now go and advocate.

So we don't have a rush because of that. They're afraid of something coming down. Make sure everyone understands that there's no rush to do it until we know which way.

I guess I'm not concerned. We need to get this done in the next meeting. We need to do it right first. Correct.

Cameron, when you look at all this, can you look at, you know, you talked about that special license that Philadelphia has, would that apply to existing establishments too? Because that's not really a zoning, you know, thing. So I'd like to kind of know how that will play out.

And that's definitely one of the challenges. The Pennsylvania one, again, I thought it was a creative solution. Yeah, I like the solution. Theirs is contained in a general code, not in a zoning code. So that's where that difference kind of comes in. But we can make recommendations. Absolutely, yeah. The request from council has been the recommendations from this board recommendations, it doesn't have to be we need to change our quality of the zoning code, it can be we actually think this is applicable to the general code, we think this is applicable to building code, whatever that comes to be. But I'll dig into that as well.

Thank you. Any other questions for staff?

These are the cultural resource element survey flyers. I just printed one out for you guys to be able to look at physically, but I'm going to email you guys the digital flyer. If you guys know any businesses or want to post it on any of your social media or any way that you can make it more available to our community to take the survey, I would really appreciate that. About 1.30.

Okay.

I just did a video with Aaron yesterday, so hopefully that will help get the numbers up. It should be on Long Bay Symphony's little slideshow thing before the show, this coming up for Beethoven. And we have a few different public engagement videos dates in mind, like the Pelicans game next week.

Do you have an expectation of how many people?

Hopefully as much as we got for population or more.

Reminder, how many that was?

About 1,000.

Okay. I'll post this to Facebook and take a picture of it. Would it work?

So I'm going to send a digital flyer. I'm going to email you guys a digital flyer. I just wanted to show you guys so you can see it physically.